Month: April 2019

On Friday evening Blizzard announced a seventh expansion for World of Warcraft called Battle for Azeroth. Headline features were Warfronts, Allied Races, character-level 120, and two new zones: Zandalar and Kul Tiras. We were also briefly introduced to a very important new medallion artifact, the Heart of Azeroth, which will power up other pieces of equipment you wear. Everything was explained in more detail in subsequent panels at BlizzCon 2017, which I’ve watched and unpacked below.

Separately of the expansion, however (which has no release date although next autumn is probably the earmarked arrival window), patch 7.3.5 will contain two key new things: the beginnings of game-wide level-scaling, and a preview of a new, dynamic control point PvP arena.

Game-wide level-scaling adjusts enemies within minimum and maximum level boundaries for specific zones, helping retain the feel that some zones are more deadly than others.

“If you’re a seasoned adventurer returning from a campaign in Northrend and you come back to Elwynn Forest and find that the wolves and the bandits there are still an even match for you, that kind of undermines your progression,” said game director Ion Hazzikostas in a ‘What’s Next?’ panel.

“We’re thinking about a structure more like: imagine Westfall scales from 10-60, imagine Burning Steppes scales from 40-60. You’re never going to outlevel the zone while you’re in it but there’s still some sense of progression, and once you’ve moved past the entire expansion, you do feel like you have surpassed it and you are more powerful.”

This system will let you tackle previous World of Warcraft expansions in a flexible order. Burning Crusade’s Outland zone will scale from 60-80, as will Wrath of the Lich King’s Northrend. Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria’s content, meanwhile, will scale from 80-90. Dungeons and their rewards will scale accordingly.

The new PvP arena is Seething Shore, which has dynamic control points – think Arathi Basin with multiple possible flag locations, said Blizzard. The control points are Azerite seams, which are an important new thing in Battle for Azeroth.

Patch 7.3.5 is coming to the Public Test Realm in a “few weeks”.

Oh and one other thing before I continue: the option to create an upright orc, rather than a hunched orc, is coming! This will be selectable at character creation as well as changeable at a barber shop.

Warfronts

Warfronts are a kind of real-time strategy game with bases and resources and armies, just like Warcraft had when it was better known as an RTS series. That is the direct inspiration here, so much so that if you look on the original Warcraft 2 box, you’ll see “Battle for Azeroth” on it.

Warfronts are 20-player co-operative raids against an NPC commander and army. The first Warfront will be Stromgarde Keep in Arathi Highlands – remember that? It’s been completely revamped.

The first thing you’ll do is build a base, either the Town Hall if you’re Alliance or a Great Hall if you’re Horde. Then you’ll gather lumber and iron resources and take new territory to unlock new buildings, research and opportunities.

The tech tree for your faction will map out almost exactly as it did in Warcraft 3. Blizzard said it was trying to follow them as closely as possible.

To stop all 20 players squabbling, Warfronts democratically let you contribute the resources you gather towards what you would like to see built next. If everyone agrees, you’ll build that thing quicker, but contradictory contributions won’t be lost.

Once you have buildings that produce troops, the troops will pour out and attack the enemy, probably a bit like creeps in a MOBA. And you’ll fight with them, acting as a special unit would in an RTS I suppose, the idea being to destroy the enemy walls and commander within.

Different NPC commanders, with differing troops and strategies, will keep things fresh, as will Battlefield Events and any Warfront tech you research outside of battle.

Allied Races

Allied Races are new race types for Horde and Alliance to play as but they must be unlocked for your account by playing through a storyline first. The idea is that you’re recruiting aid, or allies, for your faction in the overarching Battle for Azeroth war.

There are six Allied Races coming with Battle for Azeroth but more are planned. The new Horde Allied Races are the Nightborne, Highmountain Tauren and Zandalari Trolls. The new Alliance Allied Races are the Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei and Dark Iron Dwarves. All of the new races have their own racial talents.

Once unlocked, Allied Race characters start life at level 20. You will be able to boost them to level 110, but if you resist and level to 110 naturally then you will unlock cosmetically special Heritage armour, which reflects the history of your race.

Heart of Azeroth

The Heart of Azeroth is a new artifact medallion which doesn’t haven’t its own skill tree but can unlock power-ups in special chest, helm and shoulder pieces. There are three rings or tiers of power-up on these items. The first ring offers a choice between four power-ups, the second ring a choice between three, and the third ring a choice between two.

The example Blizzard used was a shaman choosing between a third-tier power-up when her Heart of Azeroth dinged level 21. One of the power-ups improved her Ghost Wolf speed after taking damage, and the other improved her Astral Shift damage reduction.

It means that, fully equipped, you have a potential nine new power-ups in play. And Blizzard said there would be powers introduced later in the expansion we’ve never seen before.

You increase the level of your Heart of Azeroth by collecting Azerite, which is – ever so gruesomely – the blood of Azeroth, bubbled to the surface and solidified. Blizzard likened its discovery to the discovery of Plutonium: it’s obviously powerful but people aren’t entirely sure how to harness it. It’s what the world is fighting over in the Battle for Azeroth expansion.

What will happen to your existing artifact weapons remains to be seen. Ion Hazzikostas said, “Your artifact weapons that you currently wield, those will be consigned to history. They will go out in a – they’ll receive a proper send off. That story has yet to be told but we’ll get there.”

Replayable Island Expeditions

Once you’ve played through the separated Horde and Alliance Battle for Azeroth zones, you’ll be pushed towards contested islands and the opposing faction. These Island Expeditions are a key, replayable, semi-procedurally generated high-level form of content, where you’ll accrue Azerite, either in seams or chests, or as quest or boss rewards.

Island Expeditions are designed to take three people, of any class makeup, around 15 to 20 minutes to complete, and will be playable in four difficulties: normal, heroic, mythic and PvP.

Each time you arrive on an island, the time of day, the objectives, start locations, enemy types, general themes and things on the island may change. One time it may be day and there may be an enormous giant enemy crab plus bandits on the beach, and a strange statue in the background. Another time the whole island may be under a curse and a portal to a boss may be open. This is randomised but within a structure.

Mixing this up further will be a group of enemy champions from the rival faction arriving moments after you do and attempting to achieve the same goals. When playing the Island Expeditions on the first three difficulties, the enemy champions will be AI – albeit a new and advanced form of AI we’ve not seen before.

These AI groups will be named and have personalities. The Horde group of Spirits of Vengeance was used as an example – a group of Darkspear loyalists made up of a Shadow Hunter, Witch Doctor and Berserker. The Alliance worgen group Wolfpack Alliance was used as another example.

They’ll have modes of tactical, strategical behaviour, and depending on difficulty will do things like pop up midway through one of your fights to sap your healer and then attack your tank. Or they might polymorph you and then mount up and run away. They’ll be a challenging nuisance and they’ll add a real sense of time-pressure to proceedings.

The ultimate challenge, however, will be on PvP difficulty where you’ll be up against three players from the opposing faction.

The expansion zones

The new continents in Battle for Azeroth are Kul Tiras for the Alliance, and Zandalar for the Horde. Each has three zones.

Kul Tiras is an ancient, 3000-year-old human kingdom, famed for its naval prowess. It’s also the home of the Proudmoores, with Jaina being a key figure in the expansion. The kingdom is ruled by four houses but they’re in trouble, and you’ll need to help them before they help you. Tirigarde Sound is the main hub of Kul Tiras.

Zandalar, meanwhile, is a 16,000-year-old ancient troll empire ripped apart by Deathwing’s Sundering. Once again it’s very powerful navally and once again it’s in trouble and needs your help.

Blizzard mentioned a possible frog mount when talking about Zandalar, and also a mysterious underground Titan facility which must be the expansion’s first raid, Uldir, Halls of Control. Here lies the key to destroying all life on Azeroth, apparently, as well as a giant slimy shark slug thing.

Blizzard also said we will, in the course of the expansion, finally face off against Queen Azshara, ruler of the naga, and a giant sea monster by the looks of things.

Dungeons and raids

There will be 10 new dungeons in Battle for Azeroth, split by faction to until you reach level 120 at which point they’ll all be open to you.

We saw a glimpse of the Freehold dungeon in Tirigarde Sound. It was pirate themed, with music like Pirates of the Caribbean and a boss like Captain Pugwash, as well as an ogre with a shark for an arm. On Zuldazar, meanwhile, we saw Atal’Dazar, an Aztec temple of an instance with a heavily ornamented Tyrannosaurus Rex stomping around.

The other dungeons are:

• Tol Dagor
• Waycrest Manor
• Shrine of the Storm
• Siege of Boralus
• Temple of Sethraliss
• The Underrot
• Kings’ Rest
• Kezan

Social features

On top of all of this, Blizzard is overhauling social features, integrating voice chat in World of Warcraft as it has done in Overwatch, so you’ll be able to look who’s talking without alt-tabbing out of the game.

WoW Communities are coming too, which are character-specific groups you can join – many if you like – in addition to guilds.

Oh, To the Moon! What a wonderfully touching exploration of human life, dressed up like simple Japanese role-playing game from ’90s, that was. A few hours of game which will stay with me for years.

Now – finally – creator Kan Gao and his very small team at Freebird are ready to release the follow-up…

No, it’s not To the Moon 2 really, as the trailer jokingly suggests, and no it doesn’t have loot boxes and explosions and alien baddies. That was Kan Gao’s cheeky little joke. The real game is Finding Paradise, and it’s coming out 14th December on PC and Mac.

Finding Paradise is the second full episode in the To the Moon series (there have been smaller spin-offs like A Bird Story), an episode which tells a standalone story you can come cold to. Once again we’ll follow two special doctors venturing into the mind of a dying patient, attempting to reconstruct the memories within, in order to satisfy a life’s unfulfilled wish.

There’s no word on price yet but To the Moon was originally around ?7, depending on the store. However, To the Moon is currently discounted on Steam, down a chunky 75 per cent to ?1.74.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds is an expansion for one of the year’s best games in just about every sense of the word. This isn’t just more of the same – from a technological standpoint, it’s a genuine effort to push on to even greater heights, and an impressive evolution of Guerrilla Games’ peerless Decima Engine. Pushing beyond the forests and great plains of the original experience, The Frozen Wilds invites players to the northern-most region of the map to explore snow-covered fields and steep mountains. New features are added to Decima to emphasis the new environments and weather systems, but the core aspects of the technology are just as strong as they ever were: from the gorgeous lighting to the world class HDR implementation and smooth performance, there’s little doubt that Horizon remains a beautiful game.

So where does The Frozen Wilds innovate? First and foremost is the debut of new snow deformation technology. While moving through areas packed with deep snow, Aloy and other entities carve up the landscape in a realistic manner, leaving behind lengthy indents in the powder. These trails persist for quite some time after wandering through them as well. This means, following any skirmish, you can even follow the trail of deformation around the battlefield to retrace the fight. Beyond this, as the snow deforms in your wake, grass textures become visible beneath the surface creating the illusion of snow resting atop a once grassy plain.

Even better, as Aloy moves through the snow, her animation is adjusted to match. Her feet realistically kick up snow while pushing through it, while snowy textures are applied to her character model. The result is a convincing sensation of moving through a snowy landscape that was missing in similar areas featured in the original game. This is enhanced further by the snow showers themselves. Often thick, the use of lit snow particles does an excellent job of building just the right atmosphere for each scene.

All of this is complemented by a gorgeous colour palette. The artists have carefully selected just the right combination of colours for every scene – from the pink glow of sunrise to the freezing mountain tops, the depiction of dramatic light and colour is top notch here. Another nice addition to the game can be found in pools of water. While the implementation of screen-space reflections still falls short of expectations, these freezing pools and rivers now feature an interactive icy layer across the surface. As you walk through the water, Aloy leaves trails behind not unlike the snowy landscape. These trails are persistent as well – provided you remain in the general area.

Horizon’s landscape is built on procedural rules, and these impact the icy weather conditions too. When faced with an enemy spouting fire and death, layers of ice on water surfaces appears to melt away – an impressive detail. Each of these new features help to enhance the Horizon experience by creating a more interactive and cohesive world, and following a visit to Guerrilla’s Amsterdam studio earlier in the year, we now have a stronger sense of how the world of Horizon Zero Dawn works.

First, let’s touch on the characters and creatures of the world. The robotic denizens of the world play a key role in defining the look and feel of Horizon and the way in which they engage the player is very important in maintaining this feeling. Each creature is designed to react to Aloy based on a set of pre-defined rules and boundaries. If a distant creature spots the player, it begins to approach to determine if you’re a threat. You can then hide from this threat and avoid further conflict.

So how does it know to search for the player and what determines its behaviour? The video on this page visualises the process, but essentially, the enemy has a two-stage vision cone – the first, larger yellow cone represents its alert stage while the red barrier triggers an immediate reaction. If the player hides in long grass, the enemy is forced to search, and if it physically bumps into the player, or spots you within its immediate sphere, it switches to attack mode. This basic logic is applied to different enemies across the world with adjustments made based on the enemy type.

But what makes this more impressive is the pathing logic – the enemies can seamlessly navigate across the terrain while avoiding obstacles, but these obstacles can be adjusted in real-time. If an adjustment is made to the terrain, the AI can dynamically react and avoid this in a realistic manner complete with reaction animations and sound.

So we have some minor insight into how characters and quests might function but what about the visual make-up? Horizon features supremely detailed character models with very high triangle counts and a complex hair and clothing system designed to allow these elements to react naturally to physical movement.

When you break down the model into a wire frame, the sheer level of detail on display becomes evident. All of the characters in Horizon are modelled to an exceptionally high standard, in order to give the developers the freedom to use whichever characters they want at whatever prominence they want. The Frozen Wilds introduces new characters, but variations of older models are also present too.

Then there’s the lighting and world itself. It starts with the phenomenal skybox. Guerrilla had a staff member pouring most of his time into studying cloud behaviour and rendering to find the optimal solution. Cloud formations and movement are accurately rendered, to the point where the cost per frame is relatively high – especially when clouds are in full view. However, this cost is carefully factored into Horizon’s overall rendering budget.

World lighting is interesting as well. Horizon makes use of pre-calculated global illumination but to make this work with its dynamic time of day system, the engine blends between six different lighting bakes as the day progresses. This is combined with other lighting passes to effectively give the impression of real indirect lighting with moving sunlight. Horizon also uses a multitude of lighting passes in building each scene, starting with emissive or glow lights such as the sky followed by local direct lights such as these torches. This is then followed by the static indirect lighting and sun bounce passes before the sun and sky are rendered. Next are reflections of light across the scenery just before the final texture layer is presented.

Naturally, all of these systems are used in both The Frozen Wilds and the original Horizon experience, since they share the same world and the same core underlying technology. But what’s impressive about everything here is how well it all runs. On a PS4 Pro using the high resolution 4K mode, The Frozen Wilds turns in the same generally smooth level of performance as the original release (which has actually improved still further with additional optimisations since we first looked at it). The game simply feels great to play as a result. Horizon is built around an engine hard-coded for 30Hz, but the excellent motion blur implementation really helps here in giving a smooth, consistent experience.

That said, it’s not perfect. We tested the expansion on PlayStation 4 Pro and found that when using the high-res mode, there were occasional frame-rate drops. This is where the performance mode comes into play. This was added shortly after launch and lowers the resolution from a checkerboarded 2160p to a native 1368p to secure a more sustained 30fps lock (depth of field and volumetric passes increase in quality too). This mode was designed to add an additional 10 per cent of overhead to the game while pushing native resolution as high as it would go. The general feeling is that this does indeed take care of this sort of drop. Still, when most of the game is already locked at 30fps, our advice would be to stick with the high resolution 2160p mode – though users of 1080p screens may like to try both and see which they prefer.

Whichever way you play, you’re in for a treat. The Frozen Wilds reminds us of everything that was great with the original game, while taking both the title in new directions. There’s the sense that the artists and designers have been unleashed to create one of the most striking open world environments you can experience. Everything from the density per scene, the choice of colour, the fluidity of the animation and volume of assets really impresses here. We’ve seen a lot of large, open-ended games this year but it’s clear that Guerrilla Games stands at the top of the industry with its efforts. Even with the growing sense of open world fatigue, we found that the world and lore was interesting enough to carry us through the game, while the quality of these visuals and the solidity of the presentation is unparalleled. For us, Horizon Zero Dawn is an essential release – and The Frozen Wilds genuinely adds further to the experience.

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